Holocaust Victims Research Articles

Uncovering Names and Connections: The “Polish Jew” Periodical as a Second-Tier Record for Holocaust Remembrance and Network Analysis in Jewish Genealogy

This paper explores the Polish Jew journal as a pivotal second-tier record for advancing Holocaust studies and Jewish genealogy. Traditionally underutilized in academic research, this periodical provides a unique repository of names and narratives of Holocaust victims, filling crucial gaps in primary record collections. The investigation centers on the journal’s potential not only to contribute names to existing databases of Holocaust victims—many of whom are still unrecorded—but also to enhance genealogical methods through the integration of network analysis. By examining Polish Jew, this study illustrates how second-tier records can extend beyond mere supplements to primary data, acting instead as vital tools for reconstructing complex social and familial networks disrupted by the Holocaust. The paper proposes a methodological framework combining traditional genealogical research with modern network analysis techniques to deepen our understanding of Jewish community dynamics during and after World War II. This approach not only aids in identifying individual victims and survivors but also in visualizing the broader interactions within Jewish diaspora communities. This research underscores the significance of Polish Jew in the broader context of Holocaust remembrance. It offers a novel pathway for the future of Jewish genealogical research, advocating for the strategic use of second-tier records in scholarly investigations.

“¡Eso no nos representa!” Historia, contexto(s) y representación en el Monumento Nacional a la Memoria de las Víctimas del Holocausto Judío de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Objective/Context: In the field of Holocaust studies, the Latin American experience has occupied a liminal space. Even when the global character assumed by its forms of remembrance is widely accepted, little attention has been paid to the national cases of this region. This paper deals with a specific national case through the construction record of the National Monument to the Victims of the Jewish Holocaust, located in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The present research reveals the legal and administrative process that accompanied its gestation, the recognition of the actors that intervened throughout the period, and, finally, the character and debates that the architecture of the pantheon provoked. This cycle, which lasted a little more than two decades, allows us to qualify the meaning of the global character of Holocaust memory by considering how this experience was redefined in a national context. Methodology: For this research, qualitative techniques are used in the analysis of the legislative and patrimonial records, journalistic sources, interviews with involved actors, and a documentary film called “Monument,” which aims to give an account of the history of its construction and the representational matrix of that memorial. Originality: Although there have been, in recent years, some works that addressed the memory of the Holocaust in Argentina, they focused on various cultural media: literature, film, and testimonial narratives. This paper addresses an object whose materiality is different—monumental—and which was conceived as a public policy of commemorative character. The analysis of the construction of this memorial pantheon allows recognition of how the transnational dimensions of Holocaust remembrance intersected with aspects of the Argentine political process of the last twenty years. Conclusions: The analysis of the construction process and the materiality assumed by its architecture demonstrate, first, how the global dimensions of Holocaust remembrance interact with local contexts and, second, the tensions raised between the actors and organizations that promote its memory and the victims of Nazi persecution in Argentina.

Paul Graupe, Arthur Goldschmidt and the dispute over an Adriaen van Ostade painting in wartime France

Abstract In 2023 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the collectors Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, and the heirs of the Jewish art dealers Paul Graupe and Arthur Goldschmidt reached a financial settlement over Adriaen van Ostade’s Customers Conversing in a Tavern. The museum had been alerted to a potential claim on the painting in 2017 while conducting research on promised gifts from the Weatherbies’ collection. At that time, the van Ostade was registered as a Nazi-era loss by the heirs of Graupe. Research revealed that it was handled by Graupe and his associate Goldschmidt when they were trying to flee Nazi-occupied Europe. This article provides insight into the working relationship of Graupe and Goldschmidt, and offers clues to the fate of other works of art placed in their custody which heirs of Holocaust victims may be seeking. It also offers a roadmap for museums navigating similar provenance research, donor relations and collection management questions.

Geneza politike istorije Holokausta - studija slučaja - Republika Srbija 1945-2020

The ways of preserving and transferring the memory of the Holocaust committed in Yugoslavia in general, and especially within the German military-occupation zone "Serbia", have been the subject of analysis by numerous research projects. Most of the mentioned projects studied the period from the end of Second World War, until the first decade of the XXI century, while a negligible number of scholars attempted to theoretically frame the researched phenomenon. For this reason, the article tries to, through the analysis of the Holocaust history politics practiced by the Republic of Serbia during the period from 1945 to 2020, update the previous research on this topic as well as point out the stages in the mentioned politics genesis in order to conceptually frame them and offer for them preliminary explanations. Looking at the Holocaust history politics of the Republic of Serbia, i.e. its institutional practices, through the theoretical framework of memory studies, the research findings are based on the content analysis of documents published by prominent institutional actors during the aforementioned period. In particular, the documents and publications of the Federal Association of Fighters of the National Liberation War (SUBNOR), the Museum of Genocide Victims and the "Staro Sajmište" Memorial Center are analyzed, as well as documents from other relevant bodies and state institutions. Based on the available documents analysis and a review of scientific literature, the paper advocates the thesis of the existence of three phases within the Serbia's Holocaust history politics genesis, which are characterized by special tendencies (conditioned by social frameworks) when it comes to preserving and transferring the memory of the genocide committed against the Jewish communities of the German military-occupation zone "Serbia". The first phase represents the period 1945-1991 when the abstraction and leveling of the Holocaust victims is the norm. The second phase covers the period 1991-2011, during which the explicit naming of Holocaust victims occurs, but also their intertwining with Serbian and Roma victims. During the third phase (2011-2020), the explicit naming of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust as well as the Roma victims of Samudaripen persists, on the one hand, while at the same time striving for their (institutional) separation from the victims of the genocide committed against the Serbian people. The political landscape has significantly influenced how this history is remembered and commemorated, often reflecting broader regional and global contexts as well as their respective narratives about the Holocaust.

Menachem Kaiser’s Quest for Family Heirloom and the Aftermath of Historical Trauma

Menachem Kaiser’s Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure (2021) critiques the generic limitations of the “3G” (third-generation) memoir by pointing to its frequently sentimental tenor and facile epiphanies, perpetuated by the publishing market. Plunder focuses instead on material traces of the past and on Kaiser’s effort to reclaim property left behind by his relatives in Poland. This approach allows Kaiser to address the aftermath of historical trauma without vicariously identifying with Holocaust victims or survivors.

Les Disparus de Daniel Mendelsohn et La Carte postale d’Anne Berest : deux succès aux antipodes

This study compares the success of two books written by descendants of Holocaust victims in France. With The Lost. A search for six of six million (2006) / Les Disparus (2007), Daniel Mendelsohn brought from the United States a new look at the Holocaust and a true originality in the restitution of this event. Fifteen years later, French writer Anne Berest’s La Carte postale (The Postcard) (2021) trivializes the model of third-generation family investigation that The Lost represented. The study first details the markers of success (sales, prices, reception in the media) which already indicate two very different target audiences, then – in a second part – compares these investigations which, despite some similarities, are differently narrated, Anne Berest even adopting on the essential the opposite positioning of Daniel Mendelsohn. Finally, the last part relies on readers’ opinions to verify and clarify the trivialization detailed in the second part.

Making Holocaust Memory in Finland: The Jewish Community and Conflicting Loyalties, 1944–1950s

Abstract This article analyzes how Finnish Jews defined their position during the Second World War when Finland fought against the Soviet Union as a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany. After the Moscow Armistice in September 1944, the Jewish community’s leadership created an official narrative that transformed the community’s travails into a positive experience. They wanted to signal to the Allied forces and Jewish communities worldwide that their rights had not been violated during the war, even though Finland had been de facto allied with Nazi Germany. By doing so, they suppressed knowledge of the treatment of Jewish refugees and their deportations, as well as of their own volatile positions during the war. By inviting Marshal Mannerheim to the Helsinki synagogue in December 1944, the community helped forge Mannerheim into a national hero by honoring him for saving the Finnish Jewish community from the Holocaust. In addition, this article examines how Finnish Jews commemorated Holocaust victims vis-à-vis the commemoration of fallen Jewish soldiers in the transnational Jewish (survivor) community in the immediate postwar years.

Zagłada chamskim okiem – świadectwo groteski w „Takim większym weselu” Tadeusza Nowaka

This article is an attempt of a lecture of Tadeusz Nowak’s novel Such a Greater Wedding in an anthropological key. The author examines a testimonial value of Nowak’s writing, interpreting a relationship between characters of different ethnicity: Polish peasants in a role of bystanders next to Jewish and Romani victims of Holocaust, through the concept of Andrzej Leder’s slept-through revolution. The paper also gives an insight in the Nowak’s use of grotesque, which serves to express dynamics of ressentiment and violence.

Relocating Yiddish voices: Narrative disfigurement and the “almost-lost” story in Edgar Hilsenrath’s holocaust novel Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr

My contribution to this special issue investigates how Holocaust survivor and German-Jewish author Edgar Hilsenrath’s 1993 novel Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr (“Jossel Wassermann’s Homecoming”) adopts a narrative practice of voicing Yiddish-speaking Holocaust victims in a post-Holocaust context for the purpose of imagining fictional alternatives to the historical violence inflicted upon them. Using a narrative strategy that I term the “almost-lost” story, Hilsenrath creates a narrative universe in which Yiddish voices, if not the actual Yiddish speakers, can be collected and saved as “anti-data” by disembodied “Quasselstimmen” (German for “chatty voices”). Coupled with strategic narrative interruptions that surface through iterations of narrative disfigurement, Hilsenrath gives rise to narrative possibilities for Jewish resistance within the scope of a literary text. I demonstrate how attentive readers can identify through Hilsenrath’s highly complex narrative a signature for reconsidering the confluence of imaginative fiction and Holocaust history, emphasizing the reader’s ethical dilemma in encountering this history, while also considering how fiction can point us in new directions as we endeavor to pry open and better understand the full scope of atrocities committed against humanity in search for a renewed commitment to humanity and justice in the aftermath of genocidal violence.

The Role of Passion Combined with the Mission to Protect Humanity Reflected in the Memoirs of Ludwik Hirszfeld

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of the analysis is to illustrate the importance of Ludwig Hirszfeld’s scientific and research passion combined with his mission to protect humanity. The topic is explored in a specific historical context, which has educational value.
 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The central problem of this study is the question of what is the significance of an individual who, despite the most difficult experiences, is able to overcome fear and act to protect the dignity of people subjected to dehumanization. The research methodology used was memory studies.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The article discusses facts, mainly related to the time of World War II, including selected contexts from the biography of Ludwig Hirszfeld, who took on the mission of conquering hatred and contempt towards the victims of the German Nazis.
 RESEARCH RESULTS: History education, along with learning about the memories of Holocaust victims, helps younger generations understand the importance of the mission to protect those at risk of losing their human rights.
 CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Learning about those who opposed the German Nazis, and others who defended the dignity of every human being should be a subject of education for young people. This knowledge can make younger generations aware of the important role individuals can play in protecting life, which is the highest value.

Pamięć o ofiarach zagłady Romów i Sinti a współczesny stosunek do zmarłych w społecznościach polskich Romów – podobieństwa i różnice

REMEMBRANCE OF THE ROMA AND SINTI HOLOCAUST VICTIMS IN COMPARISON TO CONTEMPORARY ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE DECEASED IN POLISH ROMA COMMUNITIES – SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
 Many contemporary scholars of Roma communities consider the extermination of the Roma during World War II as foundational to their contemporary collective identity. The commemoration of the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of over half a million European Roma and Sinti individuals, accounting for approximately 70% of their population, has now evolved into a transnational tradition that involves culturally diverse Roma communities around the world. This article aims to compare the commemoration of Holocaust victims with contemporary rituals associated with honoring the deceased in Polish Roma communities. By examining the similarities and differences between these practices, the article seeks to explore their underlying origins. In doing so, it contrasts the experience of postmemory, inherited from previous generations, with the current remembrance of the deceased in present-day contexts.

Holocaust victims, Jewish law and the ethics of archaeological investigations

Dead bodies – and the graves in which they are interred – are often highly contested within Holocaust campscapes. Although photographs of bodies at places like Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Ohrdruf emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the exhumation of mass graves of Holocaust victims for either judicial or humanitarian reasons has become something of a taboo subject. Whilst some see dead bodies in these environments as evidence of a crime, others view them as relatives, friends, and loved ones who require a proper burial, a marked burial site, or should be left undisturbed. Disputes arise between governments, communities, individuals, and religious groups when accounting for Halacha (Jewish Law) and the dead. This paper highlights how a non-invasive methodology, derived from archaeology and other disciplines, offers one way of locating and classifying graves whilst respecting the ethical sensitivities involved in their investigation. This is a growing field of research and one which has proven ability and future potential to shed new light on the crimes perpetrated across the European Holocaust landscape.

Ponar and the will to remember: Holocaust commemorations in Soviet Lithuania

This article explores the post-war history of the largest mass murder site in Lithuania, Ponar, and attempts by Jewish survivors to commemorate Holocaust victims during the period of Soviet occupation (1944–1990). The research shows that in spite of the ruling authorities creating significant obstacles for the small Jewish population to hold commemorations and over the course of the various physical transformations of Ponar, the site remained one of the most significant and most symbolic for Jewish identity and Jewish resistance to state policies.

Ponar and the will to remember: Holocaust commemorations in Soviet Lithuania

This article explores the post-war history of the largest mass murder site in Lithuania, Ponar, and attempts by Jewish survivors to commemorate Holocaust victims during the period of Soviet occupation (1944–1990). The research shows that in spite of the ruling authorities creating significant obstacles for the small Jewish population to hold commemorations and over the course of the various physical transformations of Ponar, the site remained one of the most significant and most symbolic for Jewish identity and Jewish resistance to state policies.

PERFORMING DEATH AND TRAUMA? PARTICIPATORY MEM(E)ORY AND THE HOLOCAUST IN TIKTOK #POVCHALLENGES

TikTok is no longer the short-video platform for “silly dances.” Its transition from entertainment to an interest-based platform increased the visual volume of topics like the Holocaust, especially during August 2020, when a controversial meme-trend emerged under the popular hashtag #POVHolocaustChallenge. In this challenge, TikTokers were encouraged to participate in a point-of-view (POV) performance in which they reenacted fictionalized memories of Holocaust victims. This study draws attention to the unique nature of the #POVchallenge form on TikTok as a series of fictional memes that mediate users’ self-reflections on various social, political, and historical issues. By applying a multimodal analysis to 250 videos from the #POVHolocaustChallenge, we illuminate three imaginative and memetically reoccurring narratives in users’ (re)mediations of memories using POV aesthetics that we name mem(e)ories. (1) Testimonial - TikTokers posing as dead Holocaust victims, testifying from heaven after being murdered by Nazis. (2) Punitive - TikTokers playing prisoners in the present (2020) being sent back to tragic events as punishment for their crimes. (3) Escapist - TikTokers time traveling while merging 1940 with 2020 in a complex temporal interplay. Based also on interviews with fifteen TikTokers who participated in the challenges and five representatives of Holocaust-related institutions, we claim that the #POVHolocaustChallenge enables users’ (re)mediation of knowledge on past events and facilitates personal connections to the memory of the Holocaust via video-memes. The affective influence of multimodal memes on TikTok can spark conversation, interpretation, and reflection among youth while inviting the inscription of Holocaust memory into their (social media) lives.

Learning about Victims of Holocaust in Virtual Reality: The Main, Mediating and Moderating Effects of Technology, Instructional Method, Flow, Presence, and Prior Knowledge

The goal of the current study was to investigate the effects of a virtual reality (VR) simulation of Anne Frank’s hiding place on learning. In a 2 × 2 experiment, 132 middle school students learned about the living conditions of Anne Frank, a girl of Jewish heritage during the Second World War, through desktop VR (DVR) and head-mounted display VR (HMD-VR) (media conditions). Approximately half of each group engaged in an explorative vs. an expository learning approach (method condition). The exposition group received instructions on how to explore the hiding place stepwise, whereas the exploration group experienced it autonomously. Next to the main effects of media and methods, the mediating effects of the learning process variables of presence and flow and the moderating effects of contextual variables (e.g., prior technical knowledge) have been analyzed. The results revealed that the HMD-VR led to significantly improved evaluation, and—even if not statistically significant—perspective-taking in Anne, but less knowledge gain compared to DVR. Further results showed that adding instructions and segmentation within the exposition group led to significantly increased knowledge gain compared to the exploration group. For perspective-taking and evaluation, no differences were detected. A significant interaction between media and methods was not found. No moderating effects by contextual variables but mediating effects were observed: For example, the feeling of presence within VR can fully explain the relationships between media and learning. These results support the view that learning processes are crucial for learning in VR and that studies neglecting these learning processes may be confounded. Hence, the results pointed out that media comparison studies are limited because they do not consider the complex interaction structures of media, instructional methods, learning processes, and contextual variables.

The Washington Principles à rebours: Explaining Poland’s current restitution policy

AbstractThis article inquiries into Poland’s current approach to the implementation of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. It argues that it is more focused on the recovery of national heritage than on providing justice to Holocaust victims and their heirs. First, it discusses the outputs of the Expert Group established in 2009 to implement provenance research in line with the Washington Principles’s recommendations. It explains the failure of this initiative by bringing into focus the wider context of the inheritance of the war-time displacements and splitting of collections. It argues that Holocaust victims’ assets are one of many problematic items in Polish memory institutions and that the unresolved issue of post-war nationalizations are often perceived as an argument that hinders the Washington Principles’s implementation. It outlines the notions of “Polish war losses” and “national cultural goods” and discusses in detail the Polish provenance research databases. It notices that restitution in Poland is increasingly considered as an important national identity-building tool and analyzes several recent educational and branding initiatives of this kind.

Legal aspects of liability for Holocaust denial in Russia (through the prism of Roman Yushkov case)

The article expounds upon the issue of Holocaust denial and freedom of expression in the context of Roman Yushkov Case, who posted a link on his social network page to the article claiming that the number of victims of the Holocaust is greatly exaggerated and well below six million. Roman Yushkov’s was charged under Art. 281 Part 1 and Art. 3541 Part 1 of the Russian Criminal Code. A Jury acquitted him, having considered the arguments provided by the defence about Yushkov’s intentions only to stimulate a public debate about the number of the Holocaust victims by his publications. The Supreme Court upheld this decision. In this paper will examine the history and development of Holocaust denial, will examine Holocaust and other genocides laws globally. The author describe how the trend of the revisionism. Revisionism is an academic approach that recognizes that traditional narratives of history may not be entirely accurate and should be reviewed and revised as new information comes to the surface. At the national level have enacted a variety of laws, ranging the criminalize Holocaust denial and other genocides, Nazi ideology promoted through speech, symbols or public association or can be used to prosecute individuals who deny the Holocaust. These laws are intended to prevent the return any public reemergence of Nazi views. There are now essentially four types of regimes in this domain, in terms of scope of the offence of genocide denial. Most nations of the European Union (as well as Israel and Russian Federation) criminalize Holocaust denial. Despite the threat of criminal prosecution, however, Holocaust denial have taken on a cult-like following of their own on the internet. The article concludes about the contradictory of Russian law enforcement practice, Russian judicial system drawbacks, as well the system preparation of representatives of the legal profession.

Witnessing the Ghost, Letting the Ghost Witness: Exploring the Impediments of Witness Narratives in Holocaust Camp Testimonies through Spectrality and the Metaphor of the Muselmann

Abstract: Within debates surrounding "Levi's Paradox"—the idea that through their survival, survivors are not necessarily the "complete witnesses" of the Holocaust—the Muselmann is frequently posited as able to reconcile this conundrum. Within testimonial literature, these emaciated prisoners were perceived as ghost-like entities who were neither alive nor dead but somehow between life and death. The observed absence left in witness narratives thereby appears to be testimony from inside the experience of these Muselmänner . What is ubiquitously overlooked in such analyses is that the Muselmann primarily functions as a metaphor—rendering the absent dead legible in language. Ignoring this risks instrumentalizing the Muselmann , which threatens to allow the metaphor to become shorthand for something more generic—obfuscating the reality that Muselmänner signify real Holocaust victims. However, all metaphors contain a potential for semantic flexibility. Cannot the Muselmann's ability to pollute rigid dichotomies therefore be approached productively and more ethically when refocalizing him as a ghostly entity in testimonial literature? By examining passages from Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and Charlotte Delbo's Auschwitz and After , this article asks: if the Muselmann is viewed as a ghostly or spectral metaphor—a haunting force within the Holocaust's literary corpus—how might this spectral witness be able to draw attention to erasure and historical blind spots? Constituting an ethical and an interpretive undertaking, this refocalization simultaneously allows one to speak with the Muselmann and enables these anonymous victims to manifest themselves anew as haunting forces through literary testimony.

Celebrating Life, Sanctifying Death, and Creating Identity Through Two Forms of Holocaust Commemoration

This article focuses on two contemporary forms of individual Holocaust commemoration: “Small Purims,” a festive meal and celebration of deliverance usually held on a Holocaust survivor’s liberation date, and “Marker Memorialization,” commemorating Holocaust victims in the deceased’s family on their gravestone. I first mentioned these commemorative forms in passing in my 1995 article about Holocaust commemoration. In this article I revisit them close to three decades later, examining how they reflect the development of a central and dynamic strand of Jewish and Israeli identity connected to the Holocaust. Three generations after the end of the Second World War, this Holocaust-centered strand is no longer primarily institutional or statist but rather performative-personal and domestic, while remaining connected to a broader community. Describing and analyzing these commemorative forms as “invented traditions,” I discuss the Holocaust narrative that each form supports and analyze the nature of Holocaust-related Jewish identity that these new traditions strengthen. Finally, I discuss what we can learn from them about the relationship between the personal/family/survivor community acts of memorializing and the larger context of post-Holocaust Jewish identity and Jewish collective memory.